The present disclosure relates generally to audio samples and more particularly to selecting audio samples in response to musical stimuli.
Digital audio workstations (DAWs) can provide users with the ability to record, edit, and play back digital audio. For instance, many DAWs include a sampling functionality wherein a user can create a musical composition by arranging audio samples using a graphical user interface (GUI) and/or MIDI controller (e.g., a keyboard). Audio samples can simulate the sound of a real musical instrument, and thus playing back an arrangement of such audio samples can simulate a live musical performance.
In some situations, the playback of audio samples may fail to accurately simulate the experience of listening to a real musical instrument. For instance, playing a note on a musical instrument with a decaying sound pattern, such as a cymbal, piano, guitar, and the like, can result in the instrument having a certain amount of excitation. Due to this excitation, playing a subsequent note can produce a different sound pattern with greater excitation as compared to the excitation produced by the initial note played when the instrument was “at rest.” The playback of audio samples corresponding to such instruments may not accurately reflect differences in the excitation state.
As another example, when the same note is played repetitively on a real musical instrument, the resulting sound pattern will include some variation in audio characteristics for each repeated note, such as timbral and tonal differences. The repeated playback of an audio sample to simulate repetitive notes may sound artificial to a listener due to the lack of variation in such audio characteristics.